英语演讲:鲍勃

英语演讲：鲍勃•迪伦诺贝尔获奖发言

Good evening, everyone. I extend my warmest greetings to the members of the Swedish Academy and to all of the other distinguished guests in attendance tonight.

各位晚上好。我向瑞典学院的成员和今晚所有出席宴会的尊贵来宾致以最热烈的问候。

I'm sorry I can't be with you in person, but please know that I am most definitely with you in spirit and honored to be receiving such a prestigious prize. Being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is something I never could have imagined or seen coming.

很抱歉我没能到现场与诸位共享此刻，但请相信，在精神上，我绝对与你们同在，我深感荣幸能获得如此声望卓著的奖项。 被授予诺贝尔文学奖，是我从未想象过也没有预见到的事情。

From an early age, I've been familiar with and reading and absorbing the works of those who were deemed worthy of such a distinction: Kipling, Shaw, Thomas Mann, Pearl Buck, Albert Camus, Hemingway. These giants of literature whose works are taught in the schoolroom, housed in libraries around the world and spoken of in reverent tones have always made a deep impression. That I now join the names on such a list is truly beyond words.

从小，我就熟悉、阅读并充分汲取那些被认为值得获得该项殊荣的人的作品，如吉卜林、萧伯纳、托马斯•曼、赛珍珠、加缪、海明威。这些文学巨匠的著作在学堂上被讲授、在世界各地图书馆中陈列、被被人们虔诚地谈论着，它们给我留下了深刻的印象。如今能加入这样的名列，我的心情无以言表。

I don't know if these men and women ever thought of the Nobel honor for themselves, but I suppose that anyone writing a book, or a poem, or a play anywhere in the world might harbor that secret dream deep down inside. It's probably buried so deep that they don't even know it's there.

我不知道，这些作家是否想过自己能获得诺奖，但我猜想世界上任何一个著书写诗、或创作戏剧的人，内心深处都怀揣着这个秘密的梦想。这梦想埋藏得如此之深以至于他们自己都没意识到它的存在。

If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I'd have about the same odds as standing on the moon. In fact, during the year I was born and for a few years after, there wasn't anyone in the world who was considered good enough to win this Nobel Prize. So, I recognize that I am in very rare company, to say the least.

如果有人告诉我，我有那么一丝希望能获得诺奖，那我会认为这跟我能站在月球上的概率差不多。事实上，我出生的那一年和随后的那些年，世界上几乎没有人是完全值得诺贝尔奖的，所以，我想，至少可以说我现在属于一个非常少数的群体。

I was out on the road when I received this surprising news, and it took me more than a few minutes to properly process it. I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. I would reckon he thought of himself as a dramatist. The thought that he was writing literature couldn't have entered his head. His words were written for the stage. Meant to be spoken not read.

我是在世界巡演的过程中得知这一令人惊讶的消息的，我花了好一会儿去消化它。然后，我联想到了莎士比亚这位文学伟人。我想他是把自己当一个写剧本的来看待的，他怎么也不会想到自己是在创作文学。他的文字是为舞台而生的，是为了言说而不是阅读。

When he was writing Hamlet, I'm sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: "Who're the right actors for these roles?" "How should this be staged?" "Do I really want to set this in Denmark?" His creative vision and ambitions were no doubt at the forefront of his mind, but there were also more mundane matters to consider and deal with. "Is the financing in place?" "Are there enough good seats for my patrons?" "Where am I going to get a human skull?" I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare's mind was the question "Is this literature?"

在写《哈姆雷特》的时候，他一定在想这些问题，“谁适合演这些角色？”“这段要怎么在舞台上展现出来？”“故事背景真的要设在丹麦吗？”他富于创造的想象与野心毫无疑问是他思维最活跃的部分，但也有很多世俗琐事要考虑和处理。 “资金到位了吗？”“赞助人都能安排到好座位吗？”“到哪里能弄到人的头骨啊？”我打赌莎士比亚最不可能思考的问题就是：“这是文学吗？”

When I started writing songs as a teenager, and even as I started to achieve some renown for my abilities, my aspirations for these songs only went so far. I thought they could be heard in coffee houses or bars, maybe later in places like Carnegie Hall, the London Palladium. If I was really dreaming big, maybe I could imagine getting to make a record and then hearing my songs on the radio. That was really the big prize in my mind. Making records and hearing your songs on the radio meant that you were reaching a big audience and that you might get to keep doing what you had set out to do.

我少年时代开始写歌时，甚至当我因自己的才能而小有知名度时，我对这些歌曲的期待都十分很有限。我希望它们能在咖啡厅或酒吧被人听到，或者将来能在卡内基音乐厅，伦敦帕拉斯剧院这些地方被演唱。如果梦做得再大胆些，我希望我的音乐能被制作成唱片在电台播放，这真是我心目中最好的奖赏了。录唱片在电台播放意味着你能接触到更庞大的听众群体，而你也能按照自己的理想继续走下去。

Well, I've been doing what I set out to do for a long time, now. I've made dozens of records and played thousands of concerts all around the world. But it's my songs that are at the vital center of almost everything I do. They seemed to have found a place in the lives of many people throughout many different cultures and I'm grateful for that.

现在，我已经朝着自己规划的路走了很久了。我发行了几十张唱片，在全球举办了上千场演唱会。但我的歌曲才是我所做一切的核心，它们似乎在不同文化的各类人群中产生了影响，对此我无限感激。

But there's one thing I must say. As a performer I've played for 50,000 people and I've played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried. The fact that the Nobel committee is so small is not lost on me.

但有件事我必须要说，作为一个表演者，我为5万人演唱过，也为50人演唱过，而为50个人表演难度更高。因为5万人会融成单一人格，但50人不会。他们每个人都是一个鲜明的个体，不同的身份，自成一体。他们能更加清晰地感知事物。你的真诚以及它如何反应出你的才华和深度，都在经受考验。诺奖评委会的人数之少，我是清楚的。

But, like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life's mundane matters. "Who are the best musicians for these songs?" "Am I recording in the right studio?" "Is this song in the right key?" Some things never change, even in 400 years.

然而，与莎士比亚一样，我常常被音乐创作和日常杂事占据了大部分时间精力，“谁最适合演唱这些歌？”“这个录音室录音效果好吗？”“这首歌的调子定对了吗？”就算过了

400年，有些事也不会变的。

Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, "Are my songs literature?"

但我从来没有时间问过自己：“我的歌算文学吗？”

So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.

所以，我真的要感谢瑞典文学院，不仅花时间思考这个问题，还最终给出了一个精彩的回答。

My best wishes to you all,

致以最好的祝福，

Bob Dylan

鲍勃•迪伦

迪伦没时间考虑自己的创作是否算是文学，所以只能由诺贝尔官方来为他辩护了。

在颁奖词中，诺贝尔皇家学院的Horace Engdahl教授用一篇充满力量、极尽赞誉的演讲回击了那些批评质疑的声音。

不愧是诺贝尔文学奖的颁奖词！这篇演讲稿文采斐然，如诗一般的语言，读来极有韵味，值得细品。

What brings about the great shifts in the world of literature? Often it is when

someone seizes upon a simple, overlooked form, discounted as art in the higher sense, and makes it mutate.

什么会带来文学世界的巨变？通常，是一种简单、被人忽视，从更高意义来说被贬低为技艺的一种形式被某个人所掌握，并令其蜕变的时候。

Thus, at one point, emerged the modern novel from anecdote and letter, thus arose drama in a new age from high jinx on planks placed on barrels in a marketplace, thus songs in the vernacular dethroned learned Latin poetry, thus too did La Fontaine take animal fables and Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales from the nursery to Parnassian heights. Each time this occurs, our idea of literature changes.

于是，当代小说从奇闻轶事与日常通信脱颖而出，戏剧从站在市集木桶板上表演的杂耍发轫，拉丁诗文渐被方言歌谣取代，同样地，拉•方丹将动物寓言、安徒生把童话，从育婴室升华到高蹈派诗歌的高度。每一次变化的出现，我们对于文学的看法就随之发生改变。

In itself, it ought not to be a sensation that a singer/songwriter now stands recipient of the literary Nobel Prize. In a distant past, all poetry was sung or tunefully recited, poets were rhapsodes, bards, troubadours; 'lyrics' comes from 'lyre'.

本来，一位歌手或作曲家成为诺贝尔文学奖得主并不应该成为一个耸人听闻的事件。在久远的过去，所有的诗都是唱出来或是带着音调起伏诵读出来的。史诗吟诵者、游吟诗人、行吟诗人，他们就是诗人；而“歌词”一词就来源于“里尔琴”。

But what Bob Dylan did was not to return to the Greeks or the Provençals. Instead, he dedicated himself body and soul to 20th century American popular music, the kind played on radio stations and gramophone records for ordinary people, white and black: protest songs, country, blues, early rock, gospel, mainstream music. He listened

day and night, testing the stuff on his instruments, trying to learn. But when he started to write similar songs, they came out differently.

但鲍勃•迪伦所做的并非要回到古希腊或中古的普罗旺斯。相反，他全身心地投入于20世纪的美国流行音乐中，这些都是为普通人创作的音乐，不分人种，它们在广播电台和留声机唱片中播放：抗议歌曲、乡村音乐、蓝调、早期摇滚乐、福音音乐和主流音乐„„他日夜聆听，用乐器弹奏，试着学习创作。当他开始写出类似的歌曲时，它们呈现出来的却是另一片天地。

In his hands, the material changed. From what he discovered in heirloom and scrap, in banal rhyme and quick wit, in curses and pious prayers, sweet nothings and crude jokes, he panned poetry gold, whether on purpose or by accident is irrelevant; all creativity begins in imitation.

在他的手中，这些素材发生了变化。从别人的传家宝与废弃之物中、从陈腐的韵律与机灵妙语中、从邪恶的诅咒和虔诚的祷告中、从甜言蜜语和粗鄙玩笑中，他淘出了诗歌的黄金。是有心还是无意，都无关紧要。所有的创作都始于模仿。

Even after fifty years of uninterrupted exposure, we are yet to absorb music's equivalent of the fable's Flying Dutchman. He makes good rhymes, said a critic, explaining greatness. And it is true. His rhyming is an alchemical substance that dissolves contexts to create new ones, scarcely containable by the human brain.

即使在50年的不断聆听之后，我们还未能完全领悟迪伦那些在音乐领域能与《漂泊的荷兰人》相媲美的歌曲。“他的旋律朗朗上口，”一位评论家如是解释他的伟大。没错。他的韵律就像是一剂炼金秘方，溶解现有的语境创造出人类大脑所难以容纳的新内容。

It was a shock. With the public expecting poppy folk songs, there stood a young man with a guitar, fusing the languages of the street and the bible into a compound

that would have made the end of the world seem a superfluous replay.

多么震撼。当大众在期待着流行民谣的时候，一个年轻人手持吉他站在那儿，把街头俗语与圣经语言熔在一起，让世界末日看起来都像是多余的再现。

At the same time, he sang of love with a power of conviction everyone wants to own. All of a sudden, much of the bookish poetry in our world felt anaemic, and the routine song lyrics his colleagues continued to write were like old-fashioned gunpowder following the invention of dynamite. Soon, people stopped comparing him to Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams and turned instead to Blake, Rimbaud, Whitman, Shakespeare.

与此同时，他以一种人人想拥有的、令人信服的力量来歌颂爱。突然间，世间那些书面的诗词变得如此苍白无力，而他的同行们那些按部就班创作的词曲也仿佛成了随着炸药诞生而过时了的火器。很快，人们不再把他与伍迪•格思里和汉克•威廉姆斯这些音乐人相比，而是将他与威廉•布莱克（英国浪漫主义诗人）、阿蒂尔•兰波（法国象征主义诗人）、沃尔特•惠特曼（美国世人）和莎士比亚相提并论。

In the most unlikely setting of all - the commercial gramophone record - he gave back to the language of poetry its elevated style, lost since the Romantics. Not to sing of eternities, but to speak of what was happening around us. As if the oracle of Delphi were reading the evening news.

在商业化的黑胶唱片这一最不可能的条件中，他重新赋予诗歌语言以高昂的姿态，这是自浪漫主义时代之后便已失掉的风格。不为歌颂永恒，只在叙述我们的日常，好似德尔斐的神谕正向我们播报着晚间新闻。

Recognising that revolution by awarding Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize was a decision that seemed daring only beforehand and already seems obvious. But does he get the

prize for upsetting the system of literature? Not really. There is a simpler explanation, one that we share with all those who stand with beating hearts in front of the stage at one of the venues on his never-ending tour, waiting for that magical voice.

通过授予鲍勃•迪伦诺奖来认可这一革命，初时似乎会觉得过于大胆，但现在已然觉得理所应当。但他获得文学奖是因为颠覆了文学系统吗？并不是。还有个更简单的解释，这个解释所有看过迪伦演出的观众都懂，他们都怀着一颗跳动的心站在迪伦那永不停歇的巡演舞台前，等待着那魔力般的声音响起。

Chamfort made the observation that when a master such as La Fontaine appears, the hierarchy of genres - the estimation of what is great and small, high and low in literature - is nullified. “What matter the rank of a work when its beauty is of the highest rank?" he wrote. That is the straight answer to the question of how Bob Dylan belongs in literature: as the beauty of his songs is of the highest rank.

法国剧作家尚福尔评论说，当诸如拉•方丹这类文学巨擘诞生时，文学类型的等级——对文学高低贵贱的价值估量——便再无约束力。他曾写到：“当一部作品自身的美达到了巅峰时，等级还有什么意义呢？”这也是对鲍勃•迪伦如何属于文学范畴这一问题最直白的解答：他的音乐之美已达到最崇高的地位。

By means of his oeuvre, Bob Dylan has changed our idea of what poetry can be and how it can work. He is a singer worthy of a place beside the Greeks' ἀοιδόι, beside Ovid, beside the Romantic visionaries, beside the kings and queens of the Blues, beside the forgotten masters of brilliant standards. If people in the literary world groan, one must remind them that the gods don't write, they dance and they sing. The good wishes of the Swedish Academy follow Mr. Dylan on his way to coming bandstands.

迪伦的毕生作品已经改变了我们对诗的认知——诗是什么，该如何创作。鲍勃•迪伦作为一名歌手，值得与希腊声乐家、古罗马的奥维德、浪漫主义空想家、蓝调歌王歌后、和以及诸多以高标准来衡量而被遗忘的大师共享盛名。如果文学界的人对此不满，那他应该记得：神并不写作，他们只歌唱舞蹈。瑞典学院的美好祝愿将一路跟随迪伦先生的音乐之路前行。